how to generate a center-speaker output

hi, i ordered a new tv in a store yesterday and it has rather good speakers. my hifi is very good and i would like to use the tv as a center-speaker now. i don't have any further surround facilities, so the rest of the signal should be played by my 2 main-speakers. it just botheres me, that when i have guest, somebody always sits to much at the sides, so they don't locate the voices from the tv-position anymore. my soundcard is a soundblaster live! and i am using the kx dirver and i want to wire the audio-input of my tv. can anybody set me on the right path of what i'd have to do in order to achieve this? it should work for regular dolby surround as well as for ac3. bit tricky, eh? ;)

If I understood correctly, you want to connect center speaker output to audio input on your TV... You have a center/LFE out on your soundcard (it looks like any other stereo output) - one channel is center and other is LFE, so, just take the center channel and connect it to audio input on your TV. You should use Y cable (stereo jack on one end - two mono chinch on other) or you can manually cut the wire... I hope i haven't totally misunderstood your post because of my poor english ;) [edit] If you just want to know how to enable 3.0 output (down mix rear chanels in front), you can do it using Valex's ac3_filter (when watching AC3 divx and even DVD-s, but you should use zoomplayer and build your own dvdgraph that will use a ac3_filter as audio decoder) HTH :)

ok, that sounds like some startingpoint to investigate. thx. any idea what to do with 2ch-mp3? afsik one should also be able to generate a center-channel out of that. greetz

well, my first test were unlucky.. the kx-driver has a very nice routing-facility, but i didn't find the right filter for the player yet, so all i got was stereo downmixed to dolby surround. also not bad.. @ stargazer: could you send me this filter? i found some links at google, but they were all dead. tell me, if ok, and i'll pm you with my address.. inspired to search on that topic again by digedy i found this site, sich is quite informative: i'll go to work now and think about things on my way... actually it shouldn't be hard at all to extract that center-signal. worst case, i'll grab my soldering-iron ;) regards

There is also a way to do similar to dolby decoding with directx plugins and a suitable proggie ie Vegas . I would kill all the stereo information than do a low pass as center channel is mono unlike say the front channel which has some stereo info and rears which are 180 degrees out of phase .or could experiment with the filters in cooledit ,the channel mixer can do some simple out of phase mixing.

@ ((( atom ))) You can find Valex's ac3_filter Intervideo/Cyberlink's audio filters are installed with WinDVD/PowerDVD. Also, you can download audiofilters.zip from download section of this site. There is one older version of intervideo audio filter. Newer version you can download from my web folder . You just have to register it with regsrv32 /s iviaudio.ax in command prompt.

@stargazer: thx for the link - very cool tool. problem is, although it registers fine and zoom player uses it, i get only rrrrrrr-noise when trying to go for anything else than 2channel-output. i read the manual and tried lots of possible combinations, but yet nothing worked out. i'll surely fight my way through, though, since this tool is the solution for many problems..

well, yeah, i tried those .bat files and also the speaker conf, onlny thing i got to work was 2ch-output.. well, it will work out.. also if i find some time i will check out the routing-facilities of my soundcard using the kx-driver. they look promising.. i'll keep reporting, but i guess it will take either till the next weekend or till my new tv comes... regards

well, i had to fugure something really bad: my shitty live! value is _not_ 5.1-capable! i took for granted, that all live!-models were, but i was mistaken. never knew that. :( well, i started a thread over at the kx-drivers page and there might be a way to still get my center-out.. the ac3filter works btw, but all i get is 2channel-out or 4channel-out, where the front and rearchannels seem to be the same. didn't bother ro _really_ check it out, because i focussed on the (silent) center-channel.. does maybe anybody here know something about my particular card?

@((( atom ))) I suggest you to get hands on some solder (is that the right word for thing that you take in your hand, it heats up and then you can connect two wires or something using melt-down tinol wire? ;)) and do some "hardware" downmixing to mono signal (as DIggedy and I suggested before), that will be used as center speaker. This is a very simple thing to do, and should be more effective then any software "interpolation", emulation,.. (or whatever is the right word) ... you probably noticed my problem with english! :D ;)